


wait for a signal

by waferkya



Category: The Resident (TV 2018)
Genre: Graphic Description, M/M, Medical Jargon, Medical Procedures, Mildly Dubious Consent, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-04-21 15:55:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14288352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya
Summary: It started like a nice, cozy Tuesday morning. They woke up together before the alarm, and had the lazy, sleepy kind of sex that always drives Devon insane. It was perfect. And then it wasn’t. And it’s probably not going to be perfect ever again.this story is set after episode 1x07, and proceeds completely off canon after that.





	1. wait for a breath

Everyone at Chastain knows that Conrad Hawkins bikes to work. However, nobody knows that most days, either before his shift or right after it, Conrad Hawkins also bikes in loops around the block, pushing hard on the pedals, leaning forward into the handlebar, his back hunched and teeth grinding, hoping, just hoping, to clear his head.

It doesn’t work very often. Med school, the Corps and then his residency have ground him to the point where exhaustion feels like an extra limb; he would be off-balance if it went missing.

Speaking of being off-balance: Conrad pushes out of the elevator, his eyes trained on a can of Red Bull; as he strides past the nurses station, he holds out his left hand expectantly. It takes him three more steps, walking with his arm out like an idiot, to realize that Devon is not going to fill his hand with a patient’s file, because Devon is nowhere to be found.

Conrad spins on his heels and walks back to the nurses station.

“Where’s Doctor Pravesh?”

Nurse Amanda – she’s pretty, with kind eyes, and she looks nothing like Nic, – looks up from the computer; she turns around, and bites her lip in distress when she realizes that, yeah, nobody else is there. Conrad raises his eyebrows, polite and relentless.

“ _Hetookthedayoff_ ,” says Amanda, quick and barely intelligible. 

Conrad smiles his most wolfish smile.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I must’ve dozed off for a second, because it felt like you said that Doctor Pravesh has taken the day off, but that can’t be right… right?”

Amanda almost glares at him; she fights hard to keep her composure. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but you heard me just right. Doctor Pravesh is not coming in today. You’re gonna have to survive without him.”

Conrad is speechless for a second. Devon is more popular than him with the nurses. When did that happen?

As surprised as he is, and even a little bit hurt, Conrad can’t fight back a genuine grin.

“A’ight, I get it. Thank you, Amanda.”

She smiles back, finally relaxed, and hands him the files for the morning rounds. Conrad counts this one as a victory anyway.

*

Devon and Priya notice at the same time that the egg-white omelette is burning on the stove, and they both reach for it, from opposite sides of the table. They were waiting for a chance to take a break from the earth-shattering fight they’ve been having for the past two hours.

It started like a nice, cozy Tuesday morning. They woke up together before the alarm, and had the lazy, sleepy kind of sex that always drives Devon insane. It was perfect. And then it wasn’t. And it’s probably not going to be perfect ever again.

Priya got a once-in-a-lifetime job offer. She read the email on the toilet, while Devon was cooking breakfast. He heard her gasp, than she started to giggle, then the giggles turned to laughter and kisses and another round of sex. Unexpected, but welcome.

Then finally, when they’d sobered up a little, her happiness asked for its price.

“The job is in Brussels.”

That’s over four thousand miles from Atlanta, six time zones over, and if Devon doesn’t care about the distance and the dissonance, Priya is worried. Priya is scared. Her new job doesn’t come with an expiration date, and she doesn’t want to be without him indefinitely.

So she says: “Come with me.”

Devon’s brain, and his heart, and his gut, they all unanimously start screaming: _FUCK NO. WHAT?_

Which is why Devon called in sick at the hospital, and the omelette burned, and now they can’t even look each other in the eye.

“I just started at Chastain.”

“You can get into any program in Belgium. They have the best healthcare in Europe. _Public_ healthcare, Dev. No more of this classist, exploitative, disgusting American medical business.”

“My… my parents live here. I don’t… I can’t be half across the world from them.”

Priya doesn’t look impressed. “My parents live on the other side of the planed, and I’m perfectly fine. I moved here for you.”

Devon laughs, he’s feeling hysterical. Not enough oxygen is finding its way to his brain.

“Wait, wait, that’s not…” _That’s not fair_ , he wants to say, but the words won’t leave his mouth. Priya looks like she’s been hit by a truck anyway, and he’s already starting to apologize – even if he really doesn’t want to – when his page goes off like an hysterical bee.

He slams the page face-down on the table.

“You’d been living here for years before you met me. Moving from Syracuse to Atlanta is… what, fifteen hours’ drive? It’s not the same thing, that’s not fair, and you know it.”

“I know, I just…” her voice breaks, she’s out of words and options and maybe out of patience too, a little. “I’m sorry. But can you imagine, being together long distance? I mean, we barely see each other as it is, and we live together.”

“I know. I know, and I’m sorry too, but… I can’t leave my job.” He struggles to find the courage to admit it out loud, but eventually he does: “I don’t _want_ to.”

Priya is about to start crying, and Devon as well. He reaches out and pulls her into a hug, and they hold each other hard and close, as they have the freak-out of their lives.

“Fuck,” she gasps, her voice wet with tears. “We’re breaking up. I never thought this would happen.”

“Me neither,” he says, feeling dazed, detached from himself. “Me neither. I’m so sorry. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

*

It’s barely afternoon when Conrad walks into the room of his fourteenth patient of the day, stabbing at his uncooperative tablet, but when he looks up to meet Mrs. Diehl’s eyes, he finds instead that Devon’s familiar shape is occupying half his field vision.

Conrad bites his bottom lip to keep in a smile, and walks up to the bed anyway, noticing how relaxed Mrs. Diehl looks while she amiably chats away at Devon, the oxygen mask carefully kept at a small distance from her face.

“Morning, Mrs. Diehl. How are we feeling today?” he asks, shooting a quick, dry glance at Devon. The kid looks worn out.

“I feel much better, doctor, really. I’m especially happy to have met this bright young fellow here,” she says, nodding her head towards Devon. Normally, he would’ve blushed and tried to deflect the compliment. Today, he stands there staring blankly at his hands. Conrad notices.

Mrs. Diehl has a kind smile. She touches Conrad’s arm lightly, in a reassuring gesture. He puts his hand over hers, checks the latest lab results for her blood panel.

“Alright. It looks like everything’s improving the way we were hoping, and I think Dr. Tray will be more than happy to take you into his OR later today. You have family with you?”

Conrad then proceeds to listen to a painfully detailed and accurate listing of all the relatives that are coming to visit Mrs. Diehl very, very soon.

When the check-up is over and done, Conrad slams his tablet on the nurses’ station and quickly checks his pager then his watch, considering lunch. Then he turns to Devon, who’s still wearing that weird look of aimless thoughfulness.

“So, you’re not dead.”

Devon blinks out of his funky mood and finally looks at Conrad. “Yeah… I guess?”

“You weren’t here this morning, the nurses told me you’d taken the day off. So I assumed you must’ve been dead.”

Devon furrows his brow. “No, yeah, I meant to apologize for that. I’m sorry. I just had a small emergency, I’m sorry if I put you in a tight spot.”

All of a sudden Conrad feels like an asshole and he can’t really say why. Maybe it’s because all the nurses at the station are looking at him from the corner of their eyes, silently judging, and he feels the weight of their stares and it makes him nauseous.

“Alright. It’s fine, just…” He has no idea how to finish that sentence. Zero. Nilch. Thankfully, Devon is so embarrassed he just talks over him:

“I’m sorry, I swear, I… I’ll bring coffee next time?”

“No, there won’t be a next time, Devon.”

“Right.”

Conrad’s frowny face turns into a somewhat kind smile so quickly it might’ve given him whiplash.

“You wanna eat something?”

Devon says no, he’s just gonna do a couple more rounds, see if he can be useful in the ER, then he disappears; which is how Conrad ends up standing alone in the middle of the hallway, feeling like an idiot who just got stood up at a date. Which is an insane comparison, he reckons, but also, it’s the only one that fits.

He walks away shaking his head, thinking about his bike. How many trips around the hospital will it take to clear his mind? Maybe ten, twelve.

*

Conrad comes back forty-two minutes later, with thirty-seven laps around the hospital under his belt and two stacked plastic containers of salad. He has forks and condiments sticking out from his breast pocket.

He looks around, feeling irritated. He’s trying to do something uncharacteristically nice and Devon is nowhere to be found.

Conrad walks up to the nurses station, he catches Nona’s eye. She smiles, sweet and flirty, and he grins right back. His back is still kind of sore from their night together. They were good.

“Hey,” she says, then nods to the salads. “Is that for me?”

Conrad grimaces. “Sorry. I’d gladly share, but then if my intern collapses from starvation it’s gonna be a lot of paperwork, you know how those things go.”

Noni chuckles, and right there and then, Conrad thinks he has a clear shot at a reprise of last night’s gymnastics. Then Noni looks up, tilts her head to the side and asks:

“Speaking of Doctor Pravesh. What’s going on with him?”

Great. One more nurse obsessed with his intern’s mental health. The kid is killing him. “What do you mean?”

“He’s been slaving away in the ER like it’s the end of the world. I was just wondering… does he need someone to cheer him up?”

And there’s no mistaking what kind of cheering up activity Noni is thinking about, and she’s thinking about doing them with Devon, which immediately kills all of Conrad’s enthusiasm.

He has to fight hard in order not to roll his eyes into extinction.

“He’s probably just mopey ‘cause it’s Tuesday,” he says, with only the slightest pang of guilt at belittling his intern. Noni doesn’t look convinced anyway. “I’ll find him in the ER then, yeah?”

“Yes.”

*

Devon is not in the ER. He’s hiding under the emergency stairwell, because he just did a tracheotomy on a sixteen-year-old girl who is now breathing on her own and will make a full recovery, but he feels like he’s bursting at the seams and he can’t stop shaking.

He pushes his forehead to the cold wall and tries to breathe. He recognizes the symptoms and patterns of a panic attack, and he really doesn’t want to have one right in the middle of his shift. Disgraceful. Unprofessional. Straight-out sad as fuck.

But after a moment he realizes he’s crying, and when he does, he can’t stop. By the time Conrad finds him – and what the fuck, this is the worst part – Devon is sobbing into his sleeve like a child throwing a tantrum.

Conrad stands back for a while longer, then out of the corner of his eye Devon sees him step up.

“Your patient’s fine,” Conrad says, the usual force behind his words, like he’s trying to hammer the truth into Devon’s skull. “She’s breathing on her own. She’ll make a full recovery. You did good.”

“I know,” Devon says, because that’s exactly what he told her parents not five minutes ago. He’s startled to realize that even his fucking voice sounds wet and pitiful.

He fights back the tears, tries to compose himself. He’s bounced back from worse, Jesus Christ.

Conrad doesn’t ask what’s wrong. He waits for Devon to be ready, then when Devon turns around, Conrad just looks at him, long and hard, his eyes squinted like he can see inside Devon’s head but he can’t quite put his thought into focus.

Devon feels pulled apart and spread open under Conrad’s look. He should be used to it by now, but it still makes him squirm a little, his cheeks growing warmer, his higher brain functions succumbing to an absurd need to check if he tied his shoelaces correctly.

“I got you lunch,” Conrad says eventually, holding up the salads, and Devon nods, dumbstruck.

They eat together, sitting on the bottom step of the stairs. There’s a thin layer of sweat on Conrad’s temples, the palms of his hands scrubbed pink from where they were gripping his bike’s handles. Devon really doesn’t want to notice all these details, but he does anyway and stores them away in the Conrad-shaped box inside his head.

At one point, Conrad’s knee bumps against Devon’s thigh and stops there, half-leaning and half-pushing against him.

Devon looks up, and Conrad is staring at his food, apparently unaware and unbothered by the point of contact between them. Devon swallows on a dry throat. He opens his mouth and thinks about speaking, telling Conrad everything that happened with Priya.

He shoves in a forkful of salad and tomatoes and boiled potatoes instead. He’s embarrassed himself enough for one day.

“Thank you,” he says after, and it comes out barely audible, not much more than a breath, but he guesses that Conrad heard.

Conrad is up and ready to leave; he shakes his head, the sunlight pouring in from the windows catches in his hair and makes him glow golden and holy, and so frustratingly untouchable.

“We have another six hours of work to do, minimum. You up for it?”

Devon went to Yale _and_ Harvard, he can recognize a rhetorical question when he meets one. So he doesn’t even give an answer, just picks up the plastic containers – now empty – and follows Conrad back to the hospital.

He feels like shit. But watching his boss stroll confidently through the chaos and mayhem, he also feel wonderful. Invulnerable. Protected.

Conrad shoots him a look over the shoulder, like he heard that thought, and despite everything, because of everything, Devon smiles.


	2. wait for the morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING!!!  
> this chapter contains graphic language and images / descriptive scenes of medical emergencies and procedures
> 
> (i'm overwhelmed by the positive feedback i received for chapter one! i'll elaborate further in the end notes, but for now, thank you so much and i hope you enjoy this.)

When Devon gets back after his third double shift, the apartment is empty. He starts to panic, standing just one step inside the door, overwhelmed by the lack of a greeting and the turned-off lights and the closed curtains. Then, the surprise washes past him, he readjusts his sense of space and time and remembers that it’s midday on a Monday; of course Priya wouldn’t be home.

The coat gets thrown over an armchair, and Devon collapses into the sofa, kicking off his shoes. Every day he wears his perfectly polished Ecco Oxfords, the same brand and model that kept him upright and with good posture throughout med school. They’re elegant, sleek, and yet comfortable, resistant to harsh cycles of washing and sanitizing. They’re wonderful shoes, truly, they’re perfect. But after over seventy-two hours interspersed only with half a dozen very short breaks, Devon hates them so much.

He stretches out his toes with a sigh and, not for the first time in the past few years, Devon fantasizes about strolling into a Nike or Footlocker store, and just buy his own body-weight in sneakers.

He tells himself, not today. He will not give in, self-indulgence is a slippery slope. Conrad already took away his ties; if Devon starts wearing sneakers to work, next thing he knows he’ll be sporting a full-on beard like Irving and dear God, what is this, a hospital or Coachella?

There is only one person in the world who can pull off shabby-chic and still be respected as a doctor, and that person is not Devon.

It’s Conrad. Of course it’s Conrad.

Devon slides a little further down the couch. Now his pants feel awful too. Button’s off, zipper halfway undone, and Devon can spread his legs wide and selfish across the empty cushions.

There’s something about Conrad that makes him appear impervious to all the laws and rules of life that other people struggle with. Maybe it’s just his attitude. Devon is pretty sure that wearing rings and bracelets screws with the health and hygiene regulations in at least fifteen different ways, and yet nobody seems to care, because it’s Conrad.

Because he’s always careful to remove all his paraphernalia before any procedure. Because once, he let one of the kids in Paediatric Oncology play with his black leather bracelet for a full half hour during chemo, and the bracelet was still attached to Conrad’s arm, which meant that he ended up playing with an adorable, sad little patient for the longest half hour in human history, and at the end of the playdate, he gifted the beautiful strip of fine Italian leather to his new little friend. Because when he’s lost in thought, Conrad rubs his thumb back and forth across his ring, twisting and turning it around his finger, and sometimes he’ll put the cold metal to his mouth and he’ll start sucking on it mindlessly and all the nurses will collectively sigh so hard the Earth’s axis trembles a little.

Devon briefly evaluates the possibility of taking off his pants entirely.

He and Priya are not having sex, of course, what with the whole _not-being-together-anymore_ thing still going strong. If they’re still living together for a couple more days before she moves halfway across the world, it’s out of friendship, mutual respect, practicality and, in Devon’s case, sheer masochism. But no matter how dizzy and confused he still is about this break-up, it would be pretty inappropriate to be found half-naked on the couch.

On the one hand, Devon is kind of pissed that he can’t do what he wants in his own apartment. On the other hand, Priya won’t be home for at least another six to eight hours.

He shimmies out of his pants, adjusts his briefs, and sighs in relief at the feeling of fresh air on his thighs. Then he frowns at the sight of his half-hard cock.

“What are you so interested in?” he asks, because fuck it, he just bulldozed his way through the longest, shittiest week-end of work so far; if he wants to talk to his own dick, he’s perfectly entitled to do it.

He gets no particular answer. His brain went radio-silent, suffocated by something Devon is quite sure feels a lot like embarrassment, although he can’t really understand why. Christ, he’s exhausted.

Even if there’s no discernible reason for the existence and persistence of his own hard-on, Devon takes one look at his cock and the decision is made for him.

He jacks off and passes out on the couch, hoping against all hopes that his brain will cut him some slack and wake him up before Priya gets home.

*

There is only one reason why Conrad is chewing gum, and it’s fairly simple: Mina is visiting because she got benched again by her supervisor for being arrogant, and she hates the sound of jaws munching and gnawing at gum.

“I can dislodge the entire bottom half of your face in fifty-two seconds,” she says, after exactly seven minutes.

“Tongue included?” Conrad asks, shooting her a cheeky smile over his shoulder. She nods and his smile only grows wider.

Irving passes by them and hands over ten dollars to Conrad, looking sour.

“His bet was that you’d last more than ten minutes,” Conrad says, plucking the gum out of his mouth and disposing of it into a garbage can.

“Nonsense. You picked _strawberry_ gum,” Mina says, as if strawberry gum once came into her lab armed with an AK47 and threatened to destroy all of her precious neurosurgery machinery. What a scoundrel, strawberry gum.

Conrad slips into a patient’s room – Gordon Garland, thirty-two, suspect lumbar herniated disk; Conrad likes alliterating names and, more importantly, he knows Mina _loathes_ them, so this is already wonderful. Except the herniated disk and the pain and the suffering and the potential surgery, of course.

Devon is already there, and Conrad gives him the tiniest, most imperceptible nod of approval; good little solider, ready to present a completely routine patient.

As Devon speaks about tests and Mr. Garland looks properly terrified and Mina does her best impression of a statue, Conrad’s eyes travel down the length of his intern’s legs.

Sober blue scrubs that do nothing to hide the battered, bright yellow pair of Chuck Taylors, slightly too big on his feet. Conrad bites back a big grin.

Devon announces to Mr. Garland that a nurse will come over soon to take him to his MRI and half a second later, the three of them who can walk out of the room without doubling down in excruciating pain are out in the hallway, ready to walk to the next patient.

“Nice kicks,” Mina tells Devon before Conrad can make up his mind about what to say.

Devon looks down, like he just forgot all about the shoes, then the tips of his ears turn bright red. He manages to keep a straight face. Only barely.

“Oh. Yeah. There was a… uhm, an accident in the ER, before you came over. The… bodily fluids kind of accident. The scrubs are regulation, but shoes…”

“They come from the lost-and-found,” Mina deadpans. Devon nods looking like someone just ran over his cat three times.

“I like ‘em,” Conrad proclaims, with a playful and just-this-side-of-sarcastic nudge of his elbow against Devon’s arm. “They make you look alive.”

Devon rolls his eyes so hard he probably sprained something. Conrad wastes no time explaining he wasn’t kidding, he does like the shoes. Devon wouldn’t believe him anyway.

*

The worst thing any doctor can do is describe a shift as ‘quiet’. It’s like wishing good luck to a ballerina five seconds before her grand opening. Conrad is not superstitious, but he’s also not an idiot, and he knows that this particular type of idiosyncrasy stems from the perfectly reasonable need to be alert at all times.

So yeah, Conrad is never, ever going to describe a shift he’s currently working as ‘quiet’. Quiet is a shitty word. Quiet means distraction means complacency means mistakes. And mistakes mean death.

Quiet means he has time on his hands and he can sit in a corner and watch as Jude comes over to the nurses desk, even if it’s way past the end of his shift and he should be home right now, instead here he is, flirting with Nic, and there she goes, smiling back and looking up at him from under her lashes and Conrad is certain that quiet is the worst.

He checks in on his patients even if he just left them five minutes ago; they’re all still alive, everything’s well, the hospital is not on fire.

Why does he feel so anxious and angry and restless, then?

Conrad goes to the on-call room because he wants to break something, and he knows he’ll find Devon in there. The room is chilly: the AC has been broken for days and nobody in Administration has yet spared enough time and money to send down a technician.

As it turns out, Devon really is there. Except he is asleep, dead to the world and sprawled across the top cot, because he’s young and idealistic and stupid and never takes the bottom bunk for himself, even if it’s more comfortable and with a better mattress and the linens get changed more often.

Conrad bites his lip. He stares at Devon’s face, and Devon looks worried even in his sleep. He looks anxious, malnourished, overstressed and exhausted. These are all great, wonderful, perfect things to be when you’re an intern green as grass. But Devon, Mr. Yale _and_ Harvard, for all his deer-in-headlights big brown eyes has never truly looked this bad. Not for medicine, anyway.

Conrad watches him squirm and shiver in his sleep and worries about his intern’s life outside this place. He doesn’t want to know about it, not per se; but he can see there’s something bothering Devon other than patients and the unbearable responsibility of life and death, and he worries.

Even the nurses fucking noticed there’s something going on with Doctor Pravesh: Conrad has seen them slip him the good Gatorade and patients’ rations at all hours, like a flock of mother hens – or angry she-wolves, in most cases – caring for the latest addition to the pack.

Conrad gives up trying to inject himself into Devon’s dreams. He grabs a couple of threadbare blankets from under a small table and throws them over Devon, wrapping him without waking him up. Conrad’s eye fall to the yellow spot of Devon’s borrowed shoes dangling over the foot of the bed and he smiles.

Then, Conrad lays down on the bottom bed and wraps himself in one leftover blanket.

Staring at the rusty-red metal netting under the mattress does nothing to ease the tight feeling inside his chest, but after going over the symptoms and procedures to identify a heart attack and coming to the conclusion that he is, in fact, not having one, Conrad is lulled to sleep by the evened-out rhythm of Devon’s breathing.

*

Later that same night, it’s less than fifteen minutes to the end of the shift and Devon walks up to Conrad, who’s filling in paperwork at the nurses desk.

“I had this weird dream,” Devon starts, and immediately Conrad looks up, daring him to finish his sentence, but Devon isn’t going to back down. “You were in it. You carried this big backpack full of blankets…”

“Your chattering teeth were keeping me awake,” Conrad says, doing his best in order to seem comfortable and unbothered.

Devon smiles, half embarrassed.

“Thanks,” he says. Then, some of Conrad’s observation skills must be rubbing onto him, because out of the blue he notices there’s something weird about Conrad’s posture. And after another moment, to his own amazement Devon realizes that Conrad is all weirdly hunched and twisting his torso in order to keep his back to the corner of the hallway where Nic is standing.

“Is everything alright?” Devon asks, and from the way Conrad stares at him, he can tell that Conrad knows he’s smelling something fishy.

“Peachy,” Conrad says anyway, but he sounds testy. “Why?”

“Nic looks skittish. She won’t be caught dead looking over here, so I just thought…”

Devon shrugs. Conrad signs the paperwork and sets his pen down. He checks the time.

“Do you want to hit the bar, after?”

Devon sounds desperately grateful when he says, “Yes.”

And then all Hell breaks loose.

Tonight, Hell takes the form of a high-speed, multiple-vehicle collision on the freeway. A full Greyhound bus was involved in the crash, so the ER is flooded with patients. Conrad, Devon and everyone else snap back to full focus like they didn’t just spend twenty minutes savoring the moment they would step out of the hospital.

There’s no time for melancholy in an emergency.

Conrad sends Devon off on his own: it’s late, they’re running on skeleton crew as usual, and there’s far too many patients to handle. Devon is trusted. Conrad doesn’t look twice after him and Devon’s heart swells three sizes in pride.

By the time the first rush of survivors has trickled down to a more manageable stream, Devon is covered in blood and fluids and his lost-and-found yellow shoes are ruined as well. He has a grand total of zero seconds of time to mourn their loss.

He feels wrecked. So far, he’s had to call three DOA’s, one of them was a sweet-looking old lady, so peaceful and sombre you could think she was just sleeping; he’s had to intubate four patients, extract a piece of guard rail from the stomach of a young man and then send him off to the OR; he has relocated six shoulders on five different people, and reset a femur. He has lost count of how much painkillers he’s ordered to be injected.

It’s been frantic for so long, and then suddenly, he’s out of people to treat.

Across the room, he locks eyes with Conrad. They stand, bloody and breathless, among pain and agony but significantly less chaos than half an hour ago. Devon deflates, adrenaline rushing away, and he begins to smile.

Suddenly Nic is in his field of vision, holding a tray of paper cups. She looks exactly like Devon feels; and yet, she has not lost her composure, nor control of the situation.

“Take some, you’ll need it. Another wave is coming,” she says, tight-lipped. Devon takes the coffee without discussion; it’s just hot enough and too sweet but it shocks his brain back to life.

He sees Conrad grab a cup without even looking at Nic, just giving her a curt nod to say thank you, and now Devon is convinced something is definitely up with the two of them.

Then he sees Nic walk up to Jude, who came down to help even after his surgery on the young man stabbed by guard rail; Devon sees the way she stops just inside his personal space bubble, he sees the way he looks grateful and enchanted by her, the quick, wordless conversation they hold just standing together. He sees Jude’s hand travel along Nic’s side, up to her waist, and rest there for a moment.

Devon is no gossipy bitch, but he can recognize a romance when he sees it.

The coffee burns the roof of his mouth a little, and he can’t imagine what Conrad must feel like. He can’t bring himself to look back down across the room. He has no idea what he would see; he doesn’t want to know.

Then the second wave hits, and of course, it’s worse than the first.

He treats an injured paramedic. He pulls a shard of glass the size of his fist out of the thigh of a strangely unfazed young girl. He sees broken arms, broken feet, broken skulls.

He’s just getting to work on a woman who appears confused and loopy, probably a bad concussion, when he hears Conrad roar out his name in a deep, urgent voice he’s never heard before.

“I need you _right here_ , Devon.”

It works like a charm. Devon spins on his heel, grabs Irving and puts a pen-light in his hand, entrusting the concussed woman to him. Then he sprints across the room and in less than two seconds he’s standing by Conrad, except that’s not exactly accurate, because Conrad is currently kneeling on top of a gurney, straddling a very pregnant woman and giving her chest compressions.

“Pulse,” he barks at Devon, nodding towards the woman’s belly. Devon is setting up the Sonicaid even before he realizes he’s taken it from a Nurse’s hands.

On the other side of the stretcher, a Senior OB/GYN surgical resident he’s never seen before is giving the woman a quick scan with the worst machine they have in the hospital, and she looks worried, shaking her head. 

“Clear signs of fetal distress,” Devon says, after the perfect time. Conrad has brought the mother back to life, and jumps off the stretcher. He holds onto Devon’s hips, speaking at the OB/GYN resident over Devon’s shoulder.

“What do _you_ see?” and from the way he says it, Devon can tell that Conrad doesn’t like any of this.

“This doesn’t look good. The baby is in position, he’s strong enough, but he won’t last for long. I want to induce labour, deliver the baby. He’s been under enough stress.”

Conrad shakes his head vigorously. He’s gearing up for a vicious fight, ready to spit fire and fury, and the OB/GYN is getting ready herself. But the war is over before it begins: the mother, somehow, has regained enough consciousness to ask and plead and cry for her baby to be saved.

The stretcher is rolled out towards theater and Conrad stares after it, his hands high on his hips, his face pinched. He’s unhappy, but the ball is out of his court.

He turns around and finds Devon hunched over the ultrasound machine, browsing the images it captured just moments before. Conrad steps next to him, hurried, not caring that he’s standing way too close – so close that Devon can feel the heat radiating from his body, the cool aftertaste of his cologne.

“What’s wrong?” Conrad asks, leaning in. If Devon turned right now, their faces would be perfectly aligned for—for _what_ , exactly?

“I don’t know, I’m not sure—” Devon stammers, trying to divert his brain from the verge of insanity, because that must be it, right? Thinking about Conrad like that—

Conrad presses his hand to the small of Devon’s back, and in that moment Devon’s world shatters to white.

“There!” he says, stabbing his finger at the screen. “I know it’s grainy and it’s a shitty picture but—Con—”

“Fuck,” Conrad says immediately, because he sees it too, he does, and he understands. They lock eyes for a split second and then they’re sprinting together, running like they’re on fire past the nurses desk and through the hospital, cutting corners and jumping down stairs.

Devon’s shoes aren’t made for anything more complicated than walking, and he slips and almost falls on a particularly well-waxed floor; Conrad catches him by the elbow, pulls him back to balance.

Together they crash through the OR’s doors, holding paper masks to their faces, and together they say:

“Stop right now, she has—”

“—placenta praevia!”

Everyone in the room looks horrified. The chief surgeon just made the uterine incision and, rather than amniotic fluid, blood comes out in thick waves. A lot of blood.

It’s too fucking late.

Devon is shell-shocked, looking in horror as the surgeon struggles to stop the bleeding and orders more fluids and blood bags. They were too late.

Once again, it’s Conrad who breaks him out of his spell. Conrad’s hand grabs him by the elbow and pulls him out of theater, out into the hallway, tracing back their steps to the ER now in perfect order.

Devon stumbles into an empty on-call room and tries to reign back in what he’s feeling. He’s only vaguely aware of Conrad’s presence in the room. They sit in silence for a while, until eventually Devon says:

“It should’ve been noticed on scans.”

Conrad is sombre but decisive when he says, “You noticed it.”

“I was too late.”

Conrad can’t really say anything to that.

Silence is back, and Devon hates it so much. He wants to fill it up with music, with idle chatter, with beer and vodka. He wants to be out of here, away from the cold lights and the sympathetic nurses. He wishes he could go back in time, to be able to go to sleep one more time in the warm, comfortable place he used to call home and now is just ‘the place where he waits for Priya to leave him’.

“She could still be fine,” Devon says after a while, tentatively. “I mean, we were late, yes, but we warned them a little. They could try… a brace suture. It doesn’t have to end with a hysterectomy, right?”

Conrad doesn’t answer. He’s began pacing, trying to somehow shed off his anxiousness through movement. Devon looks at him and sees the exhaustion in his face, the cagey look in his eyes, and he worries, and he worries, and he worries.

He stands up and grabs Conrad by the wrist. It’s gentle, and Conrad doesn’t pull away, but he does give Devon a wild look, like a cornered wild animal.

“About earlier… I’m sorry,” Devon says. He feels small and stupid and awkward, but he respects Conrad and he just wants to make him feel okay. “Do you still wanna get that drink? We could talk a little. God knows I need to.”

Devon tries giving him a smile. Conrad’s answer is much more simple and, at the same time, overwhelmingly complicated.

His eyes go to Devon’s hand, still holding his wrist. Then he looks up, to Devon’s face. Finally, his free hand cups the back of Devon’s head and pulls him in and just like that, they’re kissing, hungry and desperate like a couple of teenagers on the last day of summer.

Devon doesn’t want to come up for air; he presses himself up against the firm weight of Conrad’s body, and Conrad pushes back harder, until he has Devon pinned against a wall and melting under his hands.

It’s insane and it’s terrifying, but Devon shifts his legs so Conrad’s knee can slid between them, and his hands have found their own way to Conrad’s narrow hips, and he licks into Conrad’s mouth like it’s the most natural thing to do.

Conrad makes this tiny, little, wettest of sounds against his mouth and Devon is gone; everything he’s ever known about himself is burned to ashes by the torrid feeling of Conrad’s slim body against his.

And then there’s the ring. It’s cold and smooth and pressing just the right way into the nape of Devon’s neck, and it’s sending shivers down his spine.

Devon feels electric.

Conrad tilts his head back just slightly, barely breaking the kiss. His hooded eyes meet Devon’s and Devon is short-circuiting now, because Conrad is the living, panting picture of sex.

_There are beds not ten feet away_ , Devon’s half-wasting brain helpfully supplies. But Devon can’t even bring himself to look that way. He’s terrified of breaking the moment.

Conrad kisses him again, thank God, and this time it’s tight-lipped but wet and almost sweet.

Conrad takes a step back, he rubs a hand over his face, pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes.

Devon understands, with a sinking heart, that whatever this was – a mistake, a lapse of judgement, or even a moment of weakness where Conrad gave in to his innermost desire, – now it’s over.

He unglues himself from the wall, adjusts his shirt and tries to calm down his racing pulse. Conrad still doesn’t look at him.

“C’mon,” Devon says, and hates how his voice sounds rough and broken. “I’ll drive you home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how are you people even real? i didn't expect such an amazing response for chapter one and i'm floored. thank you, i'll never say it enough. i'm glad i'm writing something you can enjoy; you're all way too kind. thank you!
> 
> so, episode ten happened. i want to point out that in some cultures, making your loved one ride a silly scooter in order to protect their sprained ankle equals to a marriage proposal. the proposal is accepted if the loved one actually rides the silly scooter. then you too get your own silly scooter, and the two of you can merrily ride into the sunset together.  
> this is true. i’m assured of this.
> 
> the case of the pregnant woman with placenta praevia syndrome in this chapter is 100% inspired by a similar incident described in Adam Kay's autobiography "This Is Going To Hurt". the book is a wonderful read, funny and emotionally tough, and i cannot recommend it enough if you're interested in medicine/doctors/chronicles of the overworked and underpayed.
> 
> i don't think i've said "thank you" enough so, here we go again: thank you!


	3. wait for a fire

There are three steps leading up to the main door to Conrad’s building; he’s standing on the bottom one, hands in his pockets, looking out at the street: not at Devon’s car, not precisely. Except Devon would be less nervous if Conrad was staring right at him.

It’s an awkward stand-off, and they’ve been frozen still like this for at least five minutes. The drive over was uneventful, quiet and civil. Devon, locked inside his own head, has talked himself into the conclusion that he must have dreamed whatever happened in that room. Stress is a bastard and a creep, but it can fuck around with your brain in many ways that are worse than day-dreaming about making out with your boss.

Conrad got out of the car without a word and Devon figured, all is well. It must’ve been a dream, right?

But then, Conrad stopped on the first fucking step and never actually got into his building, and Devon is still parked five meters away, confused and panicked and off-balance.

Conrad is waiting for him to do something, probably. But what the fuck can he do?

A light is switched on in a first-floor apartment and Devon jumps like he’s a supporting character in a really shitty horror flick. An old man walks up to the now lit window, and he peers out into the night. Conrad actually waves him hello, gives him a smile that makes his eyes crinkle.

The old man opens the window.

“Evenin’, doctor. Is everything alright?”

He sounds concerned. It figures that Conrad would be so beloved by his neighbors that they’d worry about him being stalked by strange cars parked in front of the building.

“Perfectly fine, Mr. Goldberg. My colleague gave me a ride from work.”

“This late? I keep tellin’ ya, it’s unfair that they treat you like this, Doctor. You know, if you want to take a look at your God-given rights, my daughter’s a lawyer and her offer still stands,” Mr. Goldberg admonishes before disappearing again into his room.

Conrad looks unlawfully amused. Devon catches himself thinking that he would very much like to kiss that smile; he gets flustered, and embarrassed by himself. He rolls his window down.

“I’m gonna go,” he says, his voice comically low because he doesn’t want to see Mr. Goldberg again.

“Alright,” Conrad says, and Devon can’t tell if he’s disappointed or relieved or simply unsurprised. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah. Sure. Good night.”

*

As usual, Devon’s apartment is empty when he comes through the door. Hell, it’s probably even emptier, because all the boxes and suitcases piled in the entrance are gone: Priya finally caught her plane this morning. Devon finds her keys on the kitchen counter, and a note that says to look in the oven.

A groan of pleasure actually escapes Devon’s mouth when he sees the rotissery chicken waiting there for him, a perfect gift of golden, crispy skin resting on a luxury bed of roasted baby potatoes. The fridge is stocked with beer and he even finds a big salad just waiting to meet the chicken.

Devon settles on the sofa with his dinner within arms’ distance, picks the next episode of _The Good Wife_ he hasn’t seen on Netflix and sends Priya a text telling her she is, literally, the best. The fact that she’s still in the air and won’t get the text for at least another six hours kind of makes him feel better.

He ends up eating the _entire_ chicken, drinking three more beers and dozing off to the sound of Will Gardner brilliantly arguing something in court. His last drunken thought before passing out is that if Cary Agos got a proper haircut, he would become seriously irresistible.

When he wakes up, it’s almost 10AM and Devon is a little bit ashamed to admit that he’s still thinking about Cary Agos. His dick agrees.

Netflix has given up on him hours ago and shut itself down. In his attempt to sleep more comfortably, he somehow dislodged one of the sofa’s arm cushions, and toppled the salad bowl to the floor.

He feels great, though. He stretches out, sleepy but more clear-headed than he’s felt in weeks. He shuffles to the kitchen, fixes himself a cup of coffee. As the overpriced machine does its magic, Devon looks around.

He really has a lovely home.

When he’s showered and dressed and ready to go out, he flops down on a stool at the kitchen counter, and spends three hours online looking for a new apartment.

He grabs lunch from the Greek place around the corner, and tips the waitress way more than necessary, just because he can.

Then, he relocates his laptop to the living room, because it has a much better view, and calls his mom on Skype.

*

Conrad spends his day off at the gym. He’s there first thing in the morning, smiling brightly at the guy behind the reception desk, who blushes and looks away.

Conrad does his yoga routine, then he hits the weights and the bench press and then he throws himself in the pool for two hours. He showers, eats an apple in the locker room, and he’s ready to do the circuit again. Maybe he’ll try some boxing after lunch.

It’s very simple, why he’s doing this: he’s trying to sweat out the feeling of Devon’s hands on his hips. He’s been up all night, going over and over again those torrid five or fifteen or fifty minutes in the on-call room. It was excruciating and he couldn’t stop.

Conrad always, always, always goes down the same route.

First comes the heat. He sees someone he likes, for whatever reason, and a small star lights up in his belly, making him aggressive and arrogant and pushy, like a kid pulling pigtails in kindergarten.

Then, comes the explosion. More often than not, the object of Conrad’s attention will notice (how the fuck do you ignore the sun?) and, if Conrad’s lucky (he’s always lucky), the interest will be reciprocated. He’ll find himself playing hard to get a little longer, or maybe work will get in the way, but eventually, Conrad always gives in to the heat, and then it’s kissing and biting and fucking in closets and locker rooms and hotel rooms and swimming pools and flirting everywhere and fucking again on tables and beds meant for patients and washing machines and airplanes and just about anywhere at any time.

And finally, it’s time for guilt. It comes in a variety of shapes and colors, and it’s never simple.

With his first girlfriend back in middle school, he felt guilty for taking her first kiss when he knew another boy liked her much more than he did. With his last college boyfriend, it was because Conrad had enlisted and couldn’t bear the thought of inflicting loss and mourning on someone else. With Nic, he was strangled by the guilt of being the withdrawn, self-contained, uncommunicative kind of adult who never asks for help – and he could see what being with him was doing to her, making her doubt her nurturing nature, her value, even her intelligence.

Conrad is not a good person. Willing or not, he hurts those who love him, every time, without fail. With Devon, he out-did himself in ways he didn’t imagine were even possible.

He took advantage of his friend, of his student, in all the worst possible ways. And Devon has a fiancée, who is now going to suffer through hell because Conrad is so selfish and desperate and unhinged that he can’t not take what he wants.

He should lock himself in the gym and stay there until he’s too dead to cause any more damage. Actually, that’s what he’s planning to do today, and there’s nobody to stop him.

*

Erica has been a trainer at this particular gym for eight months – which is more or less the same amount of time that Conrad’s been a regular. He noticed her right away: she has a beautiful, handbook-perfect surgical scar running down her sternum, which means heart surgery, but it’s faded and nicely healed to the point that it’s almost unnoticeable, which means it’s decades old.

Conrad is interested, but it’s purely scientifical. No heat coming his way. _Yet_.

He knows that Erica noticed his looks, so when she abandons her reign in the weights’ room and walks up to the side of the pool, he’s not surprised. There’s still a chance that she came over to yell at him, but Conrad decides to be positive for once; he puts his head out of the water, pulls up his goggles, and flashes her his most brilliant, agonizingly-handsome smile.

Erica looks impressed. But she doesn’t swoon. Instead, she crouches just in front of him, and gives him a long, assessing look.

Conrad is having somewhat a hard time to catch his breath, but still he finds enough voice to be smug and insufferable, pointing at Erica’s sneakers:

“Flip-flops only. Pool’s rules.”

“I do what I want,” she deadpans. “How’s your heart rate doing, Doctor?”

“Much worse since I’ve seen you.”

She’s not falling for his over-the-top flirting routine, not even a little, which is just going to make him want to try harder. And with increasingly bad lines.

“You’ve been here since 8AM,” Erica says, and keeps talking before Conrad can interrupt with another cheesy line. “You took a twenty-minutes break. You’re overtraining, and I’m ordering you to step out of the water.”

Conrad opens his mouth to say something, but she holds up a finger. He closes his mouth immediately, kind of smitten.

“Please, don’t make me say it twice. You’re a doctor, right? If you do what you’re told, I can show you something you’re gonna love.”

 _That is one hell of a pick-up line_ , Conrad thinks, amused beyond himself. He’s smirking as he pulls himself out of the water and yeah, maybe he overdid himself a little: his legs are burning and screaming at him from the swimming, and when he puts his full weight on them all of a sudden, they wobble and threaten to give out. He manages to stay upright, but just barely.

Erica looks like she wants to laugh at him.

*

They take lunch at the cafeteria, because this is Atlanta and gyms are fancy enough to have their own food service. But what really happens is that they grab a table, and Conrad immediately forgets all about his sandwich: he’s much more happy to be crouching next to Erica, his stethoscope pressed to her chest awkwardly because she’s not a nutjob like him and is actually trying to eat.

Conrad bites his lip in concentration, moving his stethoscope a little to the right. Then, some more to the right. And eventually, he moves it all the way to the right of Erica’s chest and sucks in a shallow breath and his eyes go big and wide like saucers because he found her heart. _On the right_. An idiotic grin starts spreading across his face.

“There you go,” she says, looking bored. “That’s the face they always make.”

Conrad gets himself together and pulls the stethoscope out of his ears. He goes to sit in front of Erica, like any normal person would, but he can’t wipe that smirk off his face.

“Thank you,” he says. “You were right, that was… amazing.”

Erica smiles to herself, then taps her chest. “It’s funny how grown, adult professionals turn into excited like kids just because I have my ticker on the wrong side.”

“Situs inversus happens once in, what, twelve-thousand pregnancies?”

“Yup. I’m the 0.01%,” Erica jokes.

“And you had to have surgery because…?”

“Right aorta was acting up. My parents waited until I was, like, three, so I don’t remember much.”

Conrad takes a bite of his sandwich. He thinks about it for a while, then eventually he says: “Alright. I’m done with the interrogation, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry.”

“No, please. You must’ve… you must’ve heard all these questions five thousand times before, I know how medical professionals can get, so. This is me, shutting up about it.”

Conrad mimicks locking his mouth and throwing away the key. Erica laughs.

“Thanks.”

“Thank you, for… letting me hear that.” And he gestures vaguely towards Erica’s chest.

“Hey. Eyes up here,” she jokes, and then they’re laughing together and Conrad eats the rest of his sandwich in three bites and, yeah, he feels better.

“Alright, I’ll admit it, I needed food.”

“You need to go home,” Erica says with a pointed look. “Go home and rest and eat again in a couple hourse. You burned through enough calories, buddy.”

Conrad does his best not to bristle.

“Look, I appreciate your concern. But I’m fine. If it looks like I’m overdoing it, it’s because—”

“You _are_ overdoing it.”

“—because I’m a doctor, and I rarely get a break, so when I do, I try to cram in as much exercise as I can. Because I have no idea when I’ll be able to hit the gym again.”

Erica looks tempted to believe him. In order to encourage her, Conrad smiles, all bright and sunny and irresistible.

“You are a terrible liar,” Erica says, defeating all of Conrad’s good mood. “Look, I have no place to tell you this, I know that, so I’m gonna drop it. But just… hear this one thing out, okay? Please, stop punishing yourself. Whatever you did, however bad you think you have it… don’t take it out on your body. Just fix it.”

With one last look and a small, encouraging smille, she grabs their trash and walks away. Conrad can’t think of anything to say back. Not a witty remark, not a stupid joke, not even a double entendre.

After a while, he gets up and leaves as well.

How can he ignore the advice of a (literally) right-hearted stranger?

*

When he gets back to work, Devon feels strangely energized. Maybe it’s because there were no emergencies, so he didn’t have to rush back to the hospital in his down time. Maybe it’s because after two hours of crying and wailing and reminding him he’s never going to find such a nice girl again, his mother finally settled down, understood that it’s unlikely that Devon and Priya will get back together soon, and decided to send him a huge box of homecooked meals with overnight delivery.

He stands at the nurses station, flipping through housing ads on his phone and showing the most promising ones to Nic. It turns out, she’s a specialist in real estate.

“Charming two-bedroom apartment with scenic bathroom,” Devon reads from the description of a lovely-looking flat with a small garden at the back.

Nic takes one look at the picture and says, “The garden _is_ the bathroom.”

Devon looks at the ad, horrified, and finds that Nic is definitely right. People are insane. He thumbs to the next.

“Colorful neighborhood?”

“Racist landlord.”

“Historic—”

“Asbestos.”

Devon is at a loss of words. And apartment ads. He’s looking for a way to adjust his search filters when Conrad appears out of nowhere next to him; Devon most definitely doesn’t jump. He does not.

“Nic, hello. Who got you talking about real estate?”

Devon gapes. “How… how do you know?”

Conrad shrugs. “She’s got that look.”

“I do not have a look,” Nic says, and yeah, she does. Conrad gives her a sweet smile, making grabby hands at the files she’s piling up for him.

“It’s a great look,” he says, in his defense. “A pinched, righteous look of fury against the greedy, fraudulent slumlords of the world.”

When Nic finally hands over the files, there’s a smile tugging at the corner of her lips and Devon feels like he’s intruding.

“I have had bad experiences in the housing market,” Nic explains to Devon, which, yeah, he kind of inferred that.

Next thing he knows, he’s following Conrad out of Mrs. Diehl’s room – her post-op recovery is looking great – and Conrad half-turns to him.

“Why are you looking for an apartment?” he asks, casual and polite, just as they walk past the on-call room that served as background for all those sweet, exhilarating hallucinations Devon had the other day.

“I—uhm, what?”

“Why are you asking Nic to help you look for an apartment?” Conrad asks again, and this time he makes a point to talk slow and steady and mockingly and that’s a tone Devon can deal with much better. “Are you thinking of upgrading your lifestyle already?”

“No. Actually… no, I’m looking for something smaller, I think.”

Conrad has his hand on the door to their next patient’s room, but he pauses for a beat. He turns to look at Devon, tilts his head to the side a little, curious and confused, and Devon realizes that they’re standing in very close proximity, right now. And he can see the small speckles of green and gold in Conrad’s brown eyes, and he can study the pull of muscles in Conrad’s jaw when he bites his bottom lip in concentration, and he can get absolutely intoxicated by Conrad’s scent of generic soap and shampoo and oh, God, Devon did not hallucinate anything, did he?

Conrad did kiss him and Devon did kiss back and then they did pretend that nothing happened and here they are, out in the open in the middle of the hallway, and Devon is having a small meltdown where anyone can see.

It’s only been a few seconds, but Devon feels ancient.

Conrad is still not saying anything, mulling over Devon’s statement about a smaller apartment. He decides to elaborate on that.

“I’m not… I’m not with Priya anymore.”

Conrad sounds choked when he asks, “You guys broke up?”

“Like, three weeks ago. She moved to Belgium.”

It takes Conrad half a second to process all that. He goes from stunned to neutral to completely professional in the blink of an eye; he gives a quick nod, and then he’s pushing the door room open.

“Alright,” he says before going in. Not _I’m sorry to hear that_ , not _you’ll find your way back together_ , none of the things Devon would expect to hear after telling someone that Priya left.

 _Alright_ , Conrad Hawkins says, because fuck you, he can say that.

Devon is a little dumbstruck.

Then, the most inexplicable and beautiful thing in the world happens.

Because Conrad Hawkins is not a good person, he looks Devon square in the eyes and says: “I’m taking you out for drinks tonight.”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO, THAT HAPPENED.
> 
> hi, hello, sorry. thanks again for all your lovely comments on this story, i'm psyched and so happy about every single one of them. this week's medical jargon was kindly offered by a novel i read a while ago, where one of the characters had situs inversus and i found it so very fascinating. in case you were wondering, yes, i'm going to incorporate the cancer patients plot into this story. eventually. yep.


	4. wait for the end

The sun is setting, and it would be a spectacular view of purple and orange skies, if it weren’t for a thick cover of dark gray clouds raining in angry buckets all over Atlanta.

Jude and Nic are sitting in the window of a tiny bistro five minutes away from the hospital; they’re having a late lunch, or an early dinner – Jude doesn’t really know anymore. Nic is on her laptop browsing through charts and news articles and statistics about cancer: this has been their routine for the past couple of weeks. She’s looking for clues, some sort of epiphany that’ll let her say _yes, Dr. Hunter is cheating and here’s the evidence_.

“Didn’t you treat a Jonas Vasiliados?” Nic asks, sipping coffee from her cup.

“Did I?”

“Yeah, last winter. The amazingly bad butterfly tattoo, c’mon,” Nic says, half grinning, and she turns her laptop so he can see this guy’s face – and more importantly, the giant, colorful butterfly tattoo spreading over his clavicles and neck. That’s not something you forget.

“Oh, _him_ , of course, yeah. I think I reset his femur.”

Nic nods, biting her thumbnail, back to staring at the screen. “I think he might be one of Hunter’s patients. Or maybe he knows one.”

“Yeah? How do you figure?”

Jude stares at the downpour, trying to will it to subside. There’s an umbrella tucked between his feet, he grabbed it from his car on a whim, but the last time he used it, one of the metallic ribs shot out of place and almost hit him in the eye.

Nic still hasn’t answered his question. Jude looks over at her, and even if she’s still staring at the screen with the same tense expression, he can tell she’s not really seeing the data. She’s blushing.

He can feel the beginning of a smirk tugging at his mouth corners.

“Nic?” he asks, his voice dripping with amusement. “Why do you think that Mr. Butterfly is involved with Lane’s clinics?”

She looks up to him from under her lashes, like she wants to soften the blow; she knows all the tricks.

“I might’ve friended him.”

“Like, Facebook friend, or real-life friend?”

“Facebook friend.”

“And...?”

Nic sighs and once again, she turns around the laptop. Vasiliados’ tattoo stares at Jude in all its god-awful glory from a grainy profile picture. Nic points at one of the sections visible on the page.

“He checked in at Lane’s clinic downtown,” she explains, when she can see that Jude doesn’t connect the dots immediately.

“Oh. _Oh_. That’s some nice work, Detective Nevin. Really.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. She shuts the laptop and puts it away in her bag; she leans over and kisses Jude, soft and sweet. He braces for the question; he already knows he’s going to say yes. She does, too.

“Can you please, maybe, talk to him a little? For me?” Nic asks, just barely audible.

“Of course,” Jude says, cradling her head with his hands and pulling her in for another kiss. Screw it, they’ll be late.

*

Devon is sitting on a bench just outside the locker room, feeling immensely stupid. He can hear the shower running right around the corner; if he tilts his head just a little and pushes the door with the tip of his foot, he can see steam oozing out and feel the faint scent of soap. When he checks his watch, he realizes his shift was over forty-five minutes ago, and he still hasn’t left the hospital. This is, like, _begging_ to be called back in for an emergency.

This is madness. This is torture.

Of course, this was Conrad’s idea.

Devon doesn’t know why he agreed to this. It’s not like the hospital has one giant communal showering room for the staff; there’s stalls, privacy is respected. Besides, he and Conrad have seen each other around the showers quite a few times before. No, Devon has not been ogling his boss in the shower, because at the end of a shift, who has the mental energy to think about sex and extracurricular activities? But that’s beside the point.

The point is that Conrad offered to take him out for drinks at the end of their shift. Then he suggested that Devon shower first, and that he’d wait outside, in order to give him space.

It’s not what he said, but the fact that he said it with a lopsided grin that looked like a hungry promise and made Devon’s insides feel very gooey and warm.

So, now it’s Devon’s turn to wait for Conrad to get clean and dressed. And then they’ll get out of the hospital, cross the street, and grab the first empty table at the bar, get two ice-cold beers and, well, probably talk.

What if Conrad shoves him into a booth, though?

Devon considers the consequences of being pressed against smooth leather on one side and Conrad on the other; of sharing very little leg space under the table and having the world lit by one single low-hanging lightbulb.

 _Yeah, I’m getting a booth,_ he thinks, and then out of the corner of his eye he sees Jude turn a corner in the hallway. He looks happy but drenched in rainwater, he has a ratty-looking umbrella shoved under his arm.

Devon waves at him from a distance and Jude nods as he walks over.

“You’re getting out?” Jude asks, with a playful smile.

“Yeah.”

“Good day?”

Devon feels himself blush and doesn’t answer; Jude throws his head back and laughs wholeheartedly.

“I know, man. I think they put something in the water,” Jude says, then holds out his fist for Devon to bump it. After a moment, Devon does just that.

“Yeah,” he says lamely. Some sort of poisoning might explain a lot of inexplicable things he’s been feeling and thinking lately. Today. Right now.

And then Devon stops thinking altogether, because the locker room door swings open and Conrad comes out and half-collides into Jude. They look at each other for a second, and you could cut the tension between them with a knife and spread it over toast.

Devon distracts himself from the awkwardness in the best possible way: he gets caught up staring at Conrad. He takes in his artfully tousled hair, the thin silver necklace drawing attention to the dip of his shirt’s collar, and how he’s wearing no belt and his jeans sit a little too low on his hips. Devon’s mouth is suddenly very, very dry.

Jude must’ve noticed all that as well. Like any surgeon, he is nothing if not a sucker for this kind of detail; and even if he wasn’t an over-trained, over-competent former Marine, he would still be Conrad’s best friend. He knows what Conrad looks like, when he’s hunting.

Jude’s tense expression breaks out into a knowing smile. Conrad smiles back by reflex.

“Alright,” Jude says, sounding impressed. “Let me know how your night out goes—”

“Shut up,” Conrad tells him, but he’s not unkind, just embarrassed; he claps Jude on the shoulder, then he and Devon are walking together towards the exit, their strides matching. Devon hopes against all reason that Jude doesn’t notice.

*

“Booth,” Devon says the minute they’re inside the pub. He sees some familiar faces in the crowd, nurses and doctors scattered among civilians, but a booth at the back of the room should put them in a hidden enough position.

Conrad looks amused by Devon’s sudden bossy tone; he puts his hand at the small of Devon’s back and with a low, velvety voice he says: “Perfect. I’ll get us something to drink.”

Devon bites his lip and finds them a seat.

Conrad reappears after a few minutes bringing a pitcher of beer and two glasses. He sits in the booth, too close to Devon as predicted, and starts pouring, tilting the glasses perfectly so that the beer doesn’t foam too much.

“No shots?” Devon asks, cheeky.

“I’m not that kind of girl,” Conrad says immediately, with a smirk that bares his teeth a little.

Devon holds his glass up, Conrad nods, and they gulp down the first, blessedly iced mouthful of beer.

Conrad gives him a quick look: it’s the sort of surprised-and-pleased-and-curious kind of face he used to make all the time during the first few days of knowing Devon. It’s a look that says, _okay, yes, this is not going the way I expected it to go, and I’m impressed, I’m interested, keep it up_.

Talking back and stepping up into his role and showing off – all these things that Devon did, and still does, they earned him Conrad’s begrudging respect. But Devon is not an idiot, and he knows that what he feels coming off of Conrad in waves is not professional fascination, it’s not friendly interest.

It’s downright predatory, and Devon feels his hands itch with need. Conrad’s bony wrist is right there, resting on the table, so very still and tantalizing. Devon could probably grab it and then play it off like he wanted to check Conrad’s pulse, right?

Right.

Jesus, he hasn’t been this nervous since forever. Since his first day at Chastain, actually, and even then, most of his nervousness turned out to be wrapped around the existence of Conrad Hawkins.

“I’m not usually this quiet,” Devon says, and he feels lame as soon as the words have left his mouth.

Conrad grins. “Really? I never noticed.”

“Funny.”

After another moment of awkward silence, and another sip of beer, Conrad says, “I’ve been thinking about Doctor Hunter—”

—just as Devon says, “So, I’m single now—”

—and then they both shut up, and look gingerly at one another, trying to silently determine who’s going to talk first.

Devon says, “I think Nic is right—”

—just as Conrad says, “I’m sorry about the other day—”

—and at that point inevitably they crack up and laugh like idiots for five full minutes, because every time one of them starts to calm down, one look at the other just evokes the giggles back up into full force.

Conrad eventually drowns in beer the last hiccups of laughter. Devon puts a hand on his chest and breathes hard from the nose, catching himself.

When he looks up, he realizes they’ve both scooted closer on the booth, and now the tip of his nose is right beside the bow of Conrad’s lips; Devon tilts his head to the side, searching for Conrad’s eyes.

Conrad looks as hungry as Devon feels.

Devon tips his head forward, their lips touch, ever so slightly, and Devon feels goosebumps and shivers and presses in, licking his way into Conrad’s mouth.

It goes on forever.

Devon’s face feels impossibly warm, a little tingly from the friction of Conrad’s beard. Conrad’s arm is wrapped around his torso, pulling him in. It’s a gentle trap, and Devon doesn’t want to move at all so he simply adjusts himself on the seat and gets comfortable.

“I’ve wanted to do this for a very long time,” Conrad says, like an afterthought, his hand stroking the side of Devon’s hips.

Devon feels his face heat up even further and, because he’s a masochist, he looks at Conrad with a question clearly written across his features: _since when?_

Conrad laughs, looking a little abashed. Devon wants to devour his upturned mouth, wants to kiss the small crinkles around his eyes, wants to bury his face in the curve of Conrad’s neck.

“That central line you placed on Lily? It did me in,” Conrad admits, and Devon’s heart skips a beat and then another as his brain catches up with the fact that, hey, that was day one. _Day one_. “So it’s entirely your fault, really.”

A small cup of chips has appeared on their table. Devon grabs one, starts worrying it between his fingers trying not to think.

“I was such a jerk to Nic, that day,” he mumbles, not knowing what else to say. _Holy shit, holy shit,_ he’s stuck in a loop, _holy shit, he’s liked me so much from day one_.

Conrad’s hand travels up along his sides and finds its place in his hair; Devon’s eyes automatically flutter closed.

“You were,” Conrad says, then places an apologetic kiss to the corner of Devon’s smile. “But you were also right, to a point. You were in charge – well, you took charge. And she was wrong to look at me.”

Devon doesn’t say, _she looks at you all the time_ , because he realizes that’s not true anymore, at least in some way. Conrad looks unfazed, at peace as he plays with Devon’s hair and just drinks in his face, his other hand loosely curled around his beer glass.

This is getting pretty embarrassing.

Devon leans in for another kiss before speaking up.

“I’m going first,” he says, his lips brushing Conrad’s.

Conrad – his boss, Devon has to remind himself, – nods slightly, then downs the rest of his beer and moves to refill both their glasses.

“I think Nic is right about Dr. Hunter, and I think we should do something about it,” Devon says, keeping his eyes fixed to the table as one does when he’s insulting someone else’s mentor. “The chemo doses she prescribes—it’s rough, Conrad, she’s too aggressive with the treatment, on patients who simply can’t take it.”

“It’s dangerous territory,” Conrad warns, but his hand hasn’t moved from the back of Devon’s head.

“I know—I mean, I’m not an expert on law, but yeah, this could be criminal, and it’s awful, and I’m sorry, but we can’t let her—”

Conrad grabs at Devon’s hair a little, and immediately he goes limp and pliant, biting his lip to keep in a moan.

“I mean, it’s dangerous for us. For you,” Conrad says, tipping his head forward so it’s closer to Devon’s. _Motherfucker_ , Devon thinks; how is he so good at this?

“Wh—what do you mean? And please, stop trying to distract me with… that,” he says, making a weak gesture towards Conrad’s entire face.

Conrad smiles, bright and shameless. He picks up a napkin and holds it in front of his face, like some sort of lame curtain. It’s obviously useless, and Devon grabs it and throws it away, then leans in to steal a quick kiss. How amazing and weird and amazing is it, that he can do this now?

“Lane is… she’s not a soft person,” Conrad says; Devon can see he’s suspicious, maybe even half-convinced, but still, it’s tough to doubt the good will of the person who taught you everything. “If she thinks that you, or me, or any of us is coming at her… she’ll end anyone’s career without blinking.”

“She’s very smart, headstrong, and takes no prisoners. I think I know her type,” Devon says, with a meaningful look at the very smart, headstrong, no-prisoners-allowed man currently studying the shape of his ear. “I can handle her.”

Conrad gets the backwards compliment. He smiles, shakes his head a little. His hand comes to cup the side of Devon’s face – is it pathetic, how Devon leans into it immediately? – and he brushes the pad of his thumb across Devon’s bottom lip.

“I’m easy,” Conrad says, very slowly, his voice little more than a rough whisper.

Devon’s eyebrows shoot up on their own, pulled by disbelief.

“How? Do I have to remind you – in two weeks you took apart ten years of my medical education. How is that easy?”

Conrad smiles. Of course, he looks oddly pleased at Devon’s soft accusation.

“Because you’re good,” he simply says. “I’m a nightmare, but you’re good, so you’ll survive me, and you’ll become a great doctor. Fuck it, you already _are_. But Lane is ruthless. Yes, I am, too—but not in the same way.”

“Because she stands to profit from this,” Devon says, his ears still ringing a little because Conrad called him a good doctor, _holy shit_.

“If what you’re saying is true—”

“It is,” Devon insists. Conrad concedes the point with a sigh.

“We have to be incredibly careful,” he says eventually. “I can’t protect you from her.”

And Devon can see just how much of a problem that might be, Conrad not being able to defend and save someone. Devon grabs his hand and squeezes hard.

“She won’t see us coming,” he says, trying to sound tough, like it’s a promise he won’t break. Conrad nods, and although he still looks concerned, he distracts Devon with one more kiss.

This is getting out of hand.

“My turn,” Conrad says, then. “I’m sorry about the other day.”

“What do you mean?” Devon asks, and this is when Conrad pulls back a little, which feels like a lot.

He begins to speak a couple of times, giving up before saying anything. Devon drinks some more beer because he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Conrad says, “This is harder than I thought,” then he laughs, mostly at himself, and gets it together. “Okay, listen: I had no right to pull you into the on-call room, the other day. I can’t even make a list of all the ways it was wrong.”

“I wanted to,” Devon says; then he says it again, looking Conrad straight in the eye, even if it’s hard and embarrassing and he feels like he might die, he says it again because this is of capital importance, this is life-and-death: “Conrad, you didn’t make me do anything. I wanted to, I absolutely _want_ —well, I want you. Okay? I do. You’re fine.”

And again, Conrad gets that look, taken-aback-and-smitten-and-happy.

“I know,” he says. “But, still. It’s complicated—I’m your boss, I’m your supervisor, I’m your teacher—but, let me say this first: I’m sorry for being a dick. I thought you still had a girlfriend, and I didn’t let that stop me.”

“But I wasn’t with Priya anymore. When you… you know. In the on-call room.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Okay, but… if I still was with her? I would’ve never, I mean, I would’ve stopped you.”

Conrad rolls his eyes, “Just take the apology, please? This is not easy for me, trying to own my mistakes. Let me suffer.”

“You’re having a stroke,” Devon deadpans, and kisses the laughter off Conrad’s mouth. “Okay. Apology accepted. Thank you.”

“Good,” Conrad nods, and then they’re kissing, and somehow Devon finds himself backed into the corner of the booth, his legs clumsily spread to make room for Conrad who’s halfway through climbing in his lap, and this is very inappropriate and wonderful and incredible.

When it’s over, Devon is out of breath and grinning like an idiot.

“Do you want to head home?” he asks, high on courage and a temporary shortage of bloodflow to his brain; under the table he tries to adjust himself in his jeans, but it’s pretty much a lost battle.

Conrad hesitates for a fraction of a second.

It’s enough to split Devon’s chest open and rip his lungs out.

Everyone talks about pain like it’s something that affects your heart and the beat of the drum under your ribs; Devon has always been different. Pain and surprise and disappointment leave him breathless, unable to take in air and expand his chest, trapped inside his own shrunken, tight body.

Of course Conrad doesn’t want to go home with him. He just said it: this—this thing, this heat between them, this night—is entirely wrong, and unethical, and problematic.

Inside the hospital, Devon is Conrad’s responsibility. Outside the hospital, he can’t be anything more than a good friend.

“I’m sorry,” Devon says, praying that the floor will open up and swallow him, and he’s devastated that he can’t even stand up and walk away, why the fuck did he trap himself in a booth. “Of course. We can’t—of course.”

A strange look passes over Conrad’s face; he’s confused for a moment and then he catches up and it’s like they shocked him back alive. He grabs Devon’s hand and makes him look up.

“It’s not that,” he says, his voice strong and decisive like he’s giving orders to save a patient, which is kind of what he’s doing. Devon’s chest untightens just slightly. “Yes, I’m your boss and your teacher and your supervisor, which makes this a little tricky. But I need you to hear me out—I want to fuck you, Devon. And I will. A lot, too. You’ll beg me to stop.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Devon mumbles, embarrassed within an inch of his life. Conrad grins.

“I shall accept your challenge. But what I wanted to say is—are you sure you want to, right now? There’s no need to rush this.”

And right there and then, Devon’s brain snaps awake and he realizes he’s getting all this backwards: this isn’t Conrad gently turning him down. This is Conrad trying to gauge whether this is going to be a one-time fuck or not, because Conrad maybe wants more than that, and he’s too much of an idiot to ask.

“You have surprisingly low self-esteem, for an arrogant doctor,” Devon says, not unkindly.

“Three decades of failed relationships’ll do that to you,” Conrad says with a small, self-deprecating smile.

Devon makes it his mission in life to never see that smile again.

*

Devon finds a parking spot somewhat distant from Conrad’s building, so they walk the rest of the way, too close to one another, arms brushing, eyes locking every other step.

Conrad’s neighbor doesn’t peer out of his window when they gets inside.

Devon leans against the wall while Conrad fishes for his keys.

“It was independence day,” Devon says out of the blue. Conrad looks at him with a question, and Devon explains: “You said before that when you saw me do one of the most complicated procedure on Lily perfectly at the first try—”

“Yeah, alright, calm down, Dr. Hotshot.”

Devon grins and keeps talking, “—that’s where you knew you were interested, right? For me, it was independence day. At the bar.”

Conrad spaces out for a moment, and judging from the tiny smile playing on his lips, he’s thinking about how Devon had come at him, reckless and arrogant, and so perfectly right.

“That’s ironic,” Conrad says eventually, then he pushes the door open and bows in, nodding at Devon to follow. “Come on in.”

Devon’s heart in his throat.

“Oh, I do have one rule,” Conrad says, with the filthiest, flirtiest smile – Devon’s already rolling his eyes, waiting for the cheesy line. “No clothes in the bedroom.”

Devon smiles a little in anticipation, and follows him inside. He stops right away and stares.

Conrad’s home is an open-plan apartment. Technically, it’s all bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for being a tease? this was getting out of hand.


	5. wait for a chance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING!!!  
> this chapter contains descriptive scenes of medical procedures / a dramatized & detailed re-telling of Lily's death / a character welcoming pain as a coping mechanism in a dub-con scenario / sex
> 
> (yeah, i out-did myself for the grand finale)

It’s the small things that leave Devon completely breathless. How Conrad seems fascinated with the sharp dip of his hipbones, for example, studying it with the pads of his fingers before licking his way up from Devon’s femoral triangle and across the soft strength of his stomach, stopping right below his navel. Or the way Conrad keeps his eyes open until the very last second every time he leans in for a kiss, his lips curled into the tiniest hint of a grin; and then there’s the way his skin is pulled tight and smooth over his lean body, and gleams rosy and flushed in the dim orange light from the streetlights outside seeping under the heavy curtains.

Devon is floating someplace unknown and wonderful; he wants to touch Conrad everywhere, and he can, and he does. He runs his hands over endless stretches of warm skin and firm muscles, tangles his fingers in Conrad’s hair and gently pulls only to hear him moan, wet and impatient. Conrad pinned him down on the bed to get better access to his body but suddenly Devon feels bold and unstoppable, and he flips them over, bracketing Conrad’s torso with his knees.

Conrad is the image of sin itself, his hair tousled and his mouth red and his eyes hooded with want. Devon bows his head and kisses him, slow and lazy and thorough, smiling to himself when Conrad follows him back up not to break contact.

“I really like this,” Devon says, and when he hears his own voice he realizes he sounds a little dazed, like he’s out of his body. Conrad’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he grabs Devon’s thighs and runs his thumbs in small circles over his sensitive skin, moving upwards just so—the promise of a touch is enough to send Devon’s eyes rolling back a little.

It’s strangely intense. Maybe it’s because Devon’s gone a while without having another person writhing under him and answering to his touches; maybe it’s because he’s been thinking about this for a while—about having Conrad under his hands, pliant and hard and distractingly handsome.

Devon leans back so that the tip of Conrad’s cock is leaning against his spine; Conrad’s hand comes up to spread across his hips, and Conrad licks his lips in anticipation. Devon feels himself blush. He’s not used to feeling so exposed, and revered and wanted at the same time. Priya looked at him with love and affection; she liked his body, how it was bigger and broader and stronger than hers, how she could almost disappear in his embrace; and he liked that, too—their relationship was built on trust and comfort and even passion had a dream-like tinge to it.

Conrad wants him hard and hungry, his wolfish smile holds both a promise and a threat. Devon licks his hand— _Conrad smiles and bites his bottom lip_ —and wraps it around Conrad’s cock behind his back and he feels thrilled— _Conrad’s eyes grow wide again before fluttering closed_ —and terrified— _just as Conrad’s mouth opens up around a breathless, voices moan_ —and absolutely in love— _and Conrad’s cock jumps in his hand, hard and expectant and just this side of too thick_.

It hits Devon like a punch, the deadly cocktail of endless tenderness and affection and want and lust and respect, and the deep-seated awareness that it’s there to stay, buried in his heart like the sword in the stone. It’s very scary.

Devon’s coping mechanism has always been to distract himself with work. So, he does. His entire being is reduced to his hand on Conrad’s dick; he studies every single one of Conrad’s reactions. It’s almost too easy, as a doctor he can read and catalogue every twitch of a muscle, every slight jump in his heartbeat, every throbbing vein.

“You’ll be the death of me,” Conrad says with a grin, and Devon smiles back, ignoring his feelings in order to find a sweet spot right at the base of his shaft that makes Conrad’s breath hitch and his hip tremble.

Devon leans in for a kiss without really loosening his grip on Conrad’s cock. Conrad hums into his mouth, then he grabs Devon’s hips, his grip hard enough to leave bruises, and pushes him back, grinding. Devon gasps and shuts his eyes, his balance suddenly gone and he has to brace himself on the wooden headboard with both hands. He feels exposed and vulnerable and his wrists quiver at the unspoken request.

Conrad slides up, kissing Devon’s torso and his neck and his chin and finally his mouth in the process; now he’s sitting with Devon in his lap, their cocks slotting nicely against one another.

“Please,” Devon says, because as much as he likes foreplay and grinding and then backing up, his cock is aching with how much he wants to come.

Conrad pushes his forehead against Devon’s and says, “Would you fuck me?”

Which is such a simple, straight-forward question to ask and yet it topples Devon’s world upside down, crosses his eyes and makes his heart jump to his throat.

Devon nods, which is a little funny considered the situation, and Conrad smiles.

“Are you—sure?” Devon asks, even as Conrad fishes a bottle of lube from a nook in the headboard and pushes it into his hand.

Conrad blinks, his grey-green eyes clear as day, and then he smiles bright and charming. “I know what I want.”

For a moment Devon lets himself be overwhelmed by the knowledge that what Conrad wants is him—to be precise, for Devon to fuck him, the first time they are together.

He went to Yale _and_ Harvard; he can handle this.

Devon slicks his hand up and tries not to explode when he notices how Conrad is staring at his fingers, probably thinking about the feeling of them. With his other hand, he gently pushes Conrad back down until he’s laying on the mattress. Conrad’s leg part to make room for Devon, he even lifts them a little to give him better access; he’s done this before and Devon feels heady and a little irrationally jealous at the thought of Conrad spread open for someone else.

It’s just him here now, he has to remind himself; he circles Conrad’s opening with his index finger, drinking in the way Conrad’s eyes slip closed and his tongue darts out to wet his lips. Devon keeps dancing around the point, enthralled by the tiny reactions Conrad is trying to suppress.

“Tease,” Conrad mumbles, half-hiding his face under an arm. Devon leans in and bites his bicep just as he pushes in the first finger, and Conrad gasps and arches off the bed.

Devon is a very focused person. In a matter of minutes which feel like hours and centuries, Conrad is melting into the sheets, writhing and moaning with his mouth wide open, easily taking three, then even four fingers. His cock is leaking beads of pre-cum and Devon bows his head to lick him clean, almost curious.

“Fu— _uuuck_ ,” Conrad pants, his knuckles white where he’s grabbing the headboard.

He locks his ankles at the small of Devon’s back and pulls him in, and it sends a clear message to Devon’s neglected erection.

“Alright, alright, I got you,” Devon mumbles against Conrad’s sweat-slick collarbone. He kneels, grabs the lube again and makes quick work of his cock. Suddenly he’s gasping for breath; Conrad lifts his pelvis and pushes back against him, eager and impatient, until Devon is buried deep inside him.

_Oh_ , is the one and only thought that circles through Devon’s head; _oh_ , and he gives the first tentative push; _oh_ , and he moves his hips in a circle; _oh_ , and with a harder thrust he must’ve found Conrad’s sweet spot because Conrad lets out an unbelievable moan of pleasure.

As he thrusts in and out trying to find a decent rhythm, Devon brushes Conrad’s hair back and out of his face and says, “I want to keep you like this forever.”

Conrad turns his head into Devon’s hand and smiles. He kisses his wrist, then backs up across his palm and finally takes two of Devon’s fingers in his mouth, sucking and licking and circling them with his tongue and Devon’s rhythm falters a little.

“…yeah, okay, this works too,” Devon mumbles incoherently. Conrad bites his fingers, playful and challenging at the same time.

Devon is going to come so quickly, it’ll be embarrassing. He slows down and thinks of the worst possible things to distract himself—skin conditions and rotting organs and anchovy paste. It works, until he opens his eyes again and Conrad is all he can see, gorgeous and writhing and pushing back and asking for more, more, more.

“Can—can I—?” Devon asks, and he doesn’t have the words; Conrad looks at him with earth-shattering focus. He loops his arms around Devon’s neck and pulls him down, holds him close.

“Come for me,” he says in his ear, and Devon’s all gone, his brain is fried and it takes his body just a couple more thrusts to catch up; and Conrad is coming as well, without even a hand to his dick; he arches off the bed and twists his hips and bares his neck for Devon, who rains small kisses and smaller bites all over his skin.

They stay entangled for a while longer, Devon still on top of Conrad, the mess from Conrad’s orgasm slick and warm where their groins are pressed together. Then it’s time for kisses again, lazy and open-mouthed, and slowly Devon rolls off of Conrad and settles next to him, exhausted and sated and with his heart beating like a syncopated drum.

Conrad turns his head on the pillow to look at him, and on his lips is playing this sort of soft, almost stupid-looking smile that Devon has never seen before.

This is dangerous, Devon realizes. It’s the kind of situation where his big, idiotic mouth will open and spill too much truth, way too soon. It seems like a good idea right now, to run a hand over the side of Conrad’s body, kiss the tip of his nose, and tell him ‘I love you’. It feels true. It _is_ true, goddammit.

But Devon rolls his lips together and sticks to the touching and the kissing. Talking is the worst.

When they eventually fall asleep, Devon is very happy that he gets to be the little spoon.

*

They come into work together for a few days after that, and if anyone finds it odd or suspicious, they don’t bring it up. They call Jude for a consult on a case one day, and he does comment that Conrad looks better, maybe more rested than usual.

“I had time to get breakfast this morning,” Conrad simply says, and Devon can feel his ears heat up with a treacherous blush: _breakfast_ today was lazy blow jobs in bed, and then they showered together and it was the first time that Devon got a good look at Conrad’s ‘Death before Dishonor’ tattoo in all its flashy entirety and, look, Conrad is devilishly handsome and he can pull off anything but that script is _tacky_ , and Devon just burst out laughing so Conrad made him beg for forgiveness in all the best ways at the kitchen counter while the coffee turned cold.

“Oh, really? What did you have?” Jude asks conversationally, as he slots the patient’s scans on the luminous board and starts studying them. Devon looks over at Conrad, curious about his answer as well.

Conrad steps up to the board, crosses his arms and says, deadpan, “I got fucked, lazy and sweet. And a cup of coffee after.”

Devon flatlines for a moment. It takes Jude a beat to react, too. He looks at Conrad like he isn’t sure of what he just heard but, when Conrad doesn’t give any indication that he’s joking, Jude only looks more puzzled.

“Good for you?” he says, like he’s walking on a minefield.

“Yeah, it was very good. And, sorry, I think we wasted your time with this, it’s clearly congenital,” he says, switching off the board and pulling down the scans.

Conrad turns around to leave the room and Jude calls after him, “Did you call me down here just to brag about your sex life?”

Conrad shoots him a bright, impish smile over his shoulder and doesn’t answer.

Devon is still trying not to die of embarrassment, and he has to focus twice as hard to react as he normally would.

“I’m… glad you guys are friends again,” he manages to say.

Jude runs a hand through his hair, “Yeah, I don’t know, maybe I liked it better when he was sulking. At least he didn’t put these… images inside my head.”

“Yeah, no, you’re both miserable when you guys are fighting,” Devon says on his way out.

He catches up with Conrad halfway through the hallway and tries to glare at him, but Conrad just throws him his most disarming smile.

“Would you prefer that I _lie_ to my _friend_?” he asks, with mocking emphasis.

Devon rolls his eyes. He’s been rolling his eyes for months.

“I hate you,” he says, but he leans over Conrad a little further that what’s strictly necessary in order to look at the tablet. Conrad smiles to himself—like he thinks that Devon can’t see him, but he can and oh, God, his heart is definitely going to explode now—and leans back a little, so that his shoulder digs into Devon’s chest.

It’s not an embrace, not really, but it’s the closest they’ve been all day and Devon sighs in relief.

“I can’t wait to take you home tonight,” he says, quiet enough that Conrad has to tilt his head to the side to hear him.

“Oh, you’re sweet-talking me now? Your boss? Right in the middle of your workplace?”

“Yup,” Devon says, giving in and dropping his chin on Conrad’s shoulder.

“And you think that’s appropriate?”

There’s clearly a smile in Conrad’s voice, so Devon insists, “I don’t care if it isn’t.”

“We’re feeling brazen.”

Nobody’s around; the nearest nurse is Noni, she’s on the other side of the hallway and she’s not paying attention to them, so Devon’s hand steals a quick squeeze of Conrad’s hips.

“I seem to recall someone saying they like my insolence.”

“Hmm,” Conrad says, a little unfocused. “I wonder who that is.”

“I’ll introduce you to him, but I don’t think you’ll like him,” Devon says.

Noni is walking towards them, so Devon takes half a step back and Conrad turns around to pretend they’re talking casually, as one resident would do with his intern at any given moment of the day. Devon waits and tries to school his face into an indifferent expression. When she walks by them, Noni shoots Conrad a flirty smirk; he replies with a small nod and a sweet smile, but doesn’t look after her.

Instead, he looks at Devon and asks, “Do you want to eat out tonight? I was thinking pizza.”

“I love carbs,” Devon says, because he’s dangerously close to saying something else.

*

When they manage to take a break to eat lunch, Conrad gets a succinct string of texts from Nic.

 _at the police station, w/ evidence & witnesses. ill let you know, might need yr testimony_, she wrote. A moment later, Devon gets the same message. They try to call her, but it goes straight to voicemail. They look at one another over the table and for a moment, the world stops spinning. Devon grabs Conrad’s hand and squeezes.

He can’t promise much, but he can promise this: _I’ll be here_. Conrad understands, and he is grateful.

*

It’s almost 11PM. Devon’s shift was over six hours ago, he’s about to pass out from starvation, he can almost feel the taste of pizza on his tongue, and he has his hand stuck inside the chest cavity of a thirty-seven-year-old male steelworker on a night shift who was involved in a freaky workplace accident.

Half his chest is ripped off, and Devon’s middle and ring finger are plugging the man’s severed aorta. They’re the only thing between him and an awful haemorrhagic death. The on-call trauma surgeon is in theatre on another emergency, and it’ll take him another eight-to-twelve minutes plus scrubbing before he can intervene here.

All Devon has to do is to keep perfectly still, not even breathing; and not fall asleep. Irving is puttering around him like an anxious mother hen, giving orders to nurses and asking Devon if he needs something, anything.

“D’you want some Gatorade? You look stressed, dehydrated. How are your arms, how do they feel?”

“They were great, until you made me think about them, and now I just noticed they’re screaming murder at me,” Devon snaps back, and he didn’t want to be mean but sometimes Irving can get a little overwhelming.

“Dude, calm down, you’re freaking me out,” the steelworker says. Amazingly enough, he’s still conscious, and way too relaxed about this entire ordeal.

“Listen to the patient, Irving,” Devon says, pointedly.

“Hey,” the patient says, with a goofy grin. “Knock-knock.”

Devon rolls his eyes and, for a very brief moment, considers loosening his grip on the man’s aorta just a little—just enough that he’ll pass out for a while. They’ve already heard three terrible knock-knock jokes, and he has a hunch that the man’s repertoire hasn’t improved in the past five minutes. Irving must’ve read his thought on his face, because he makes a very very stern look (it’s one he tried to copy from Conrad; useless to say it doesn’t work as well) and then nods to the patient significantly.

“Who’s there?” Devon gives in, eventually.

“Needle.”

“Needle who,” Devon deadpans, not even trying to make it sound like a question.

The steelworker gestures vaguely at the situation he’s in, then says, “Needle little help gettin’ through, Doc.”

The entire thing is so outlandish that it actually manages to drag a snort of laughter out of Devon.

Eventually, the trauma surgeon is ready to operate and Devon is relieved of his duty as human cork and spends the next fifteen minutes washing his hands in scalding-hot water. Irving dismisses him with a pat on his back.

“You’re done for today, right?”

“Yeah,” Devon sighs, and he can’t believe his luck. He checks his phone: still no news from Nic, which was probably to be expected but worries him anyway; also, no texts from Conrad, which means he must’ve fallen asleep in some on-call room somewhere.

Devon trots to the nurses station, triple-checks that all his patient files and paperwork are in order, and he’s about to officially sign off when suddenly, an alarm goes off overhead. He looks at the monitor, as he usually does, looking right for the emergency first— _V-tach, zero O2 sat_ , but that could just mean a sensor was ripped off—and then left at the patient location and name— _room 5924, Kendall, L._

Devon starts running before his brain is entirely caught up. Lily’s room is on the opposite wing of the hospital, but he’s there in under two minutes. He would’ve been too late, but of course Conrad is already there, surrounded by a small crowd of worried nurses.

The machines beeping are deafening. Devon elbows his way into the room and doesn’t look at Lily’s body: he focuses on the monitors, on the information, on Conrad’s voice.

“Push 100 of lidocaine and shock again at 360,” Conrad orders, pacing the room with his hands on his hips. Devon’s brain registers the desperate measure, and the tears in the eyes of the nurse kneeling to access Lily’s central line. They must’ve shocked her at least three times before: Devon knows Conrad’s method, he knows he’s conservative when it comes to the shock cart.

Conrad doesn’t acknowledge Devon’s presence; he’s too worried, too scared, too lost in his own thoughts. Devon can see the wheels turning inside his head: what caused this? Why is this happening? How can he save her?

Suddenly, Conrad’s eyes snap to the male nurse doing CPR on Lily. His technique is flawless, and yet something feral possesses Conrad’s feature for a moment, and Devon’s instinct is to step closer to the nurse; he knows what order is coming in next.

“You, get _back_ ,” Conrad barks at the nurse, who looks up suddenly, startled, but doesn’t falter in his rhythm. Conrad’s lips are pressed together in a pale line. He’s not entirely rational. Devon touches the male nurse’s elbow, trying to reassure him, and seamlessly replaces him in doing CPR.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Conrad says, back to staring at the drip of the central line.

“Ready,” says the nurse handling the shock cart. Suddenly Conrad is by Devon’s side, burning hot and trembling.

“Clear,” Conrad says; Devon lifts his hands, and wants nothing more than to touch Conrad, hold him and promise him they’ll be alright.

But they won’t, and he can’t, so he doesn’t. They stare at the monitor, and when the flatline doesn’t change, Conrad orders another round at 360. Devon is back to CPR so he isn’t looking, but he can hear the desperation and the terror in his voice, as all the nurses can.

They shock again.

It doesn’t work.

Devon resumes the CPR even though nobody asked him, because this is his patient, too; he can’t lose her anymore than Conrad or Nic or anyone else in the room. For a moment, he looks at Conrad and Conrad looks back. He is frightened, and fragile, and Devon pushes as hard as he fucking can down on Lily’s chest, over and over again: he wants her to live, because he doesn’t want Conrad to have to live carrying her death with him.

They try shocking her one last time and Lily’s heart gives out.

“Asystole,” calls out the nurse who gave her lidocaine.

Conrad jumps on the bed and takes over from Devon doing chest compressions; this isn’t a rescue anymore as much as an act of desperation. Conrad is relentless, pressing down with his entire weight like he’s trying to force some of his own life and strength into Lily’s exhausted body.

This is where most of the nurses leave.

Devon instead steps closer to the bed and if he could, he would shield Conrad from view completely. He can see that Conrad is crying, his sobs melting into choked gasps of fatigue, his trembling shoulder straightened by the effort to keep trying, tears mixed with beads of sweat.

“Dr. Hawkins,” Devon says as gentle as he can be, and he uses Conrad’s title because it would be horrifying to use his first name, “asystole for over twenty minutes. You have to stop now.”

For the longest time, it doesn’t seem to work. Then, Conrad slows down and eventually stops trying to resuscitate Lily. He looks ready to come undone.

He climbs off the bed, his knees almost give out from under him. Devon can’t help himself: he steadies Conrad with a hand to the small of his back. Conrad grabs his arm and looks at him, and the wild, desperate plead in his eyes couldn’t be clearer: _don’t ask me to call it_.

Devon nods, only once, and something inside Conrad that wanted to crumble, still stays upright.

“Time of death, 23:58,” Devon says, his voice rough.

The few nurses who stayed leave the room without making a sound. Slowly, Conrad walks up to the wall, leans back into it and slides down until he’s sitting on the floor, still out of breath, looking dazed and half-mad.

Devon sits down next to him.

“She’s gone,” Conrad says in a whisper.

“I’m so sorry,” Devon says, even if it’s never going to be enough.

Conrad hits his head against the wall only once. Then he pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes, and his breath catches, and he fights with all he’s got to keep it together. Devon puts his arm around him and pulls him in: Conrad simply goes, curling up against Devon’s chest and breathing hard and wet through his mouth.

*

Conrad won’t leave the hospital and Devon won’t leave Conrad, so they don’t go home.

They’re there when Lily’s closest relatives come to collect the body. They’re there when the autopsy result comes in, and they’re there a few hours later wen the FBI comes to arrest Dr. Hunter, with unsurvivable accusations of malpractice and obstruction of justice and murder.

They’re still there, and it’s been almost an entire day, when Nic comes back, with Jude at her heels, and she finds Conrad and hugs him in the middle of the ER, and when they pull apart, they’re both teary-eyed and devastated, even in victory.

Devon looks at Jude, and recognizes himself in him. Jude looks back after a moment, and Devon can see the exact moment where Jude, too, understands everything about him and Conrad. He seems surprised and then doubtful and then confused and then angry and then relieved, all in the blink of an eye, before he settles for a quiet, small smile that Devon figures would mean _this doesn’t end here_.

They work for six hours, then Dr. Bell shows up—he shamelessly took advantage of Dr. Hunter’s arrest to get Ms. Thorpe fired and kickstart his career as CEO of the hospital—and very clearly orders Conrad to go back home: he’s been here so long that it’s illegal, and the hospital has suffered enough bad publicity as it is.

“And take your lapdog with you,” he adds as an afterthought, nodding to Devon. Conrad looks like he wants to murder him, but when he looks at Devon, Devon has the most pacific smile on his face.

All the anger suddenly leaves Conrad’s body, and he smiles back.

“At least _my_ lapdog doesn’t risk this hospital’s reputation getting arrested for murder,” Conrad calls out after Dr. Bell.

Dr. Bell turns around abruptly, his mouth already open like he’s ready to fire Conrad on the spot. But what he sees stops him right in his track: Conrad has all the nurses and doctors behind him, smiling pleasantly and yet looking oddly ominous.

Dr. Bell takes the best decision of the day and walks away pretending he didn’t hear anything.

Devon snickers, then reaches out to grab a patient’s file but Nic bats his hand away.

“He wasn’t wrong, you know,” she says, looking between Devon and Conrad. “You guys should go home.”

*

It’s the middle of the shift, so the changing room is empty, but Devon still pulls Conrad into the shower stall furthest away from the door, just in case. He pins Conrad to the cold, tiled wall, and attacks his mouth without notice, impatient, eager to taste him.

This is life-affirming sex. It’s sloppy and desperate and exactly what Devon needed; exactly what Conrad wanted. It’s not fancy: they start rutting against each other like horny teenagers, under the warm spray of the shower and with their hands tangled together, holding each other hard enough to leave angry red marks.

With every thrust of his hip and the friction of Conrad’s cock intoxicating against his skin, Devon has to bite his lips harder. He doesn’t want to say anything he might regret later, except the words are there, right at the tip of his tongue, threatening to come out with every kiss, with every moan, but he has to stay quiet. He has to.

He can’t lose this, too.

Conrad is unhinged. He tilts his head back, exposing his neck like he’s begging to be bitten; Devon hopes he’s reading him right and nips at the tender skin of his pulse point. Conrad goes rigid and still under his hands; Devon has no idea what to do, but his mouth is still on Conrad’s neck, so he tries biting again. Conrad relaxes all of a sudden and exhales, his cock getting harder and definitely more interested in the conversation.

Devon kisses a path up Conrad’s neck and to his mouth, and then Conrad says, “Fuck me.”

Devon blinks water out of his eyes.

“I don’t have any—”

“It’s fine,” Conrad insists, with a sweet smile and his wet hair sticking out in every direction. Devon is physically unable to say no to him.

Conrad turns around, bracing his arms against the frosted glass-wall of the stall.

Devon is a little hesitant. Water isn’t an appropriate substitute for lube, not in a million years, but he doesn’t have anything else. He circles Conrad’s hole with a finger, slowly pushing in, carefully watching for any sign of discomfort; his free hand is sprawled across Conrad’s back and he’s being perfectly still.

When Devon tries adding another finger, Conrad grows impatient.

“Don’t worry,” he says, sounding strained. “I can take it.”

He gives Devon a smile, bright and cocky, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Devon doesn’t want to deny him anything he wants—he couldn’t save Lily for him, so giving Conrad what he wants when it’s just the two of them is the least he can do.

He loops his arm around Conrad’s chest, and uses his free hand to adjust himself and push in. Of course, there’s more resistance than he’s used to. But slowly, painstakingly so, he is able to bury himself deep inside, and Conrad finally lets out a small gasp and a moan when Devon starts thrusting.

While he slowly rocks his hips back and forth, Devon mouths at the nape of Conrad’s neck, running his hands up and down his hips. Conrad twists his torso and drops his head against the spray of running water. Devon bites his shoulder and Conrad gives a full-body shudder that sends sparks along his spine.

Devon tries to turn Conrad’s head around just a little, just so he can kiss him.

“More,” Conrad moans, after, because the slow and steady rhythm Devon has chosen isn’t going to satisfy either of them.

Conrad braces himself better against the wall, spreads his legs further apart. Devon moans against the tightness that surrounds him, grabs him by the hips and starts thrusting in earnest.

“ _Yes_ ,” Conrad exhales, his whole body rocking back and forth with Devon’s movements. His right hand balled up in a fist, he starts hitting the wall in time with Devon’s lunges.

Devon feels weird and doesn’t understand why, until he does: this—the rhythm, the stubbornness, the force—is exactly like CPR. Conrad isn’t looking for pleasure, he’s taking a punishment he thinks he deserves.

Devon stops abruptly, ashamed and terrified. Conrad moans at the loss and half-turns to protest, but Devon isn’t thinking: he drops to his knees and puts his mouth at the dip of Conrad’s back, moving slowly downwards.

“What’re you—” Conrad begins to ask, but his words melt into a whimper and this time, the pleasure is real. This is what Devon wants to hear coming from him. He gently spreads Conrad’s cheeks with his hands a licks a broad stripe from his perineum going up, like an apology; Conrad shivers and swears under his breath and Devon doesn’t stop.

He nudges Conrad’s leg, until Conrad gives in and turns around. Still on his knees, Devon looks up; the water spray hits him square in the face and Conrad turns it off.

Conrad’s face is bright red, his eyes wet with tears. Devon leans in and takes Conrad’s cock in his mouth, as deep as he manages.

“Fuck,” Conrad says through gritted teeth; Devon has had his fair share of practice with him, and knows exactly how to have him capitulate. When Devon puts the flat of his tongue against the tip of his cock, Conrad’s toes curl into the shallow pool of water at the bottom of the shower. When Devon swallows around him and then sucks gently and puts his fingers around the base, Conrad’s head lolls forward and his eyes slip closed.

When Devon sucks at the tip and then opens his mouth wide again, Conrad doesn’t hold back anymore and starts fucking his face in tight, desperate thrusts.

He doesn’t last long, and Devon is more than happy to lick him clean after.

Devon stands up, and puts his hands on both sides of Conrad’s head. They stare at each other. Devon is begging for forgiveness and Conrad is thankful for his understanding. They meet in the middle with a slow, tentative kiss. When they pull apart, the silence is deafening once again.

Conrad, ever the practical soul, turns the water back on.

*

They’re dressed and mostly dried, half an hour later in the changing room. Devon pulls a backpack from his locker room and stretches his back. Conrad is sitting on one of the benches, checking his phone.

“Any news on Dr. Hunter?” Devon asks, walking up to him and dropping a casual kiss to the top of his head.

Conrad shrugs. “More of the same.”

“That’s not good,” Devon frowns.

“No, it’s not.”

Conrad grabs his bag and stands up, ready to go. They walk side by side, Devon is consciously trying not to match Conrad’s stride but it’s harder than he anticipated. He’s so fucking attuned to Conrad by now that not measuring himself up to him feels like sin.

They’re just outside the doors of the hospital, Devon finally breathes in the clean, fresh air of freedom and he can’t wait to cross the parking lot, grab his car and drive home. They can have that pizza he’s been craving for two days now.

But Conrad grabs his arm to stop him.

“Yeah?” Devon says, bracing for another emergency, another reason to spend twenty more hours inside this hellish, neon-lit institution.

Conrad smiles.

“Don’t worry, we _are_ going home,” he says. “I wanted to—thank you. For staying.”

Devon’s heart sinks fifty floors underground. He steps closer to Conrad, not caring about the fact that they’re right outside the hospital and anyone can see them.

“Of course,” he says, trying to make his voice sound as strong and confident as his feelings are. “Conrad, you don’t have to thank me. Of course I stayed. I—I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

For a moment, Conrad looks weirdly uncertain. Then, his entire behavior is flipped: he stands taller, confident. He curls a hand around the side of Devon’s face and his eyes go soft.

Devon has no idea what’s going on.

“Look… I know I’m not perfect,” Conrad says, and his voice is warm and a little rough and hypnotic. “I’m a piece of shit, actually, and especially with relationships, because—well, I think it’s because I know exactly what I want, and I’m not particularly fond of waiting.”

_Oh_ , Devon thinks, very clearly, _I’m being dumped._

“I’ve made this mistake before with you, going too fast, and I think I’m gonna make it again,” Conrad says, and his voice is warm and hypnotic. “I don’t want you to think that I’m careless, Devon, okay? Because I’m not.”

“I know,” Devon says. Conrad doesn’t leave him time to say, _You’re only careless to yourself, and I hope you’ll let me fix that_.

“Okay, alright,” Conrad says. He’s suddenly very close, which is weird: if he’s about to leave Devon, wouldn’t he want a little more distance between them? Devon knows himself, he’s pretty sure he’ll make some sort of desperate move. “Here it goes, then.”

Conrad opens his mouth, but no words come out. He looks uncertain, and steals a quick kiss for courage.

Devon keeps his eyes closed. He’s not feeling much of a lionheart tonight.

“I love you,” Conrad says, sweet and scared, and Devon’s eyes shoot open immediately. Conrad laughs lightly, shakes his head. “I know, it’s too soon. You don’t have to say it back.”

“Yeah?” Devon stupidly says. “Are you insane? I can just not say it back, and you’ll be fine?”

Conrad shrugs, then looks wistful for a moment, like he’s actually considering that possibility. Devon wants to shout, just a little bit.

“I don’t know, probably?” Conrad says. “I’ve had worse. I wouldn’t want you to leave anyway.”

“I know I’ve said it before but—dude, it’s amazing how you manage to butt heads with the Chief of Surgery, no, _the CEO_ of this hospital on a daily basis, and still have so little self esteem,” Devon says, genuinely stunned.

Conrad takes a step back; this was definitely a rejection and he doesn’t want to push his luck.

“I’m a man of many talents.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Devon says, and finally, finally, just as Conrad looks ready to walk away and never mention any of this ever again, he allows himself to break into his most idiotic smile. “You’re lucky I love you.”

It takes Conrad a second to react.

“Yeah?” he simply asks, and he looks actually surprised. Devon wants to kick himself in the head. And then he wants to kick Conrad, too, for good measure.

“ _Yeah_ ,” he replies, emphasizing the word to make it clear that it was so fucking obvious, right from the start.

Conrad grins, stupidly happy as well.

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Can we go now? I’m starving.”

“Of course.”

Conrad offers his arm to Devon, who looks flustered and embarrassed for exactly one second before rolling his eyes and giving in, linking their arms.

They cross the parking lot together, strides perfectly matched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you again for the support and for sticking around until the end of this story! i'm sorry this final chapter took a while, i hope the fact that it's MASSIVE (and full of smut) (and cheesy af) makes up for the wait.
> 
> here's to hoping season two will bring us joy and a lot of guy love between two guys. ♥


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